Silverchair

Press

11-01-1997

Anticipation Builds for Silverchair Set

By Doug Reece (Billboard)

After the startlingly rapid success of Frogstomp, the 1995 debut album
by Australian teen sensation Silverchair, Epic Records has prepared the
band's sophomore set, Freak Show, with a far more deliberate marketing
strategy.

John O'Donnell, director of the Australian label that signed the act,
Murmur Records, says that the plan for Freak Show, which bows worldwide
Feb. 4, has been carefully plotted since its completion last summer.
O'Donnell says that during the ensuing months, the label squared away
album art and fine-tuned marketing and sales details.

"The album was recorded in June, which essentially meant that we could
have rushed to realease it in 1996 or put it out early 1997," he says.
"All around, the extra time has been used very well."

Epic Records Group senior VP of sales Jim Scully says that the label has had a good reason to bide its time.

"This is probably the strongest realease for the [first] quarter, and
we wanted to make sure that we had enough time and energy to release it
properly," says Scully.

"This is a young group, and there's a lot of interest in them, but
we're going to be cautious," he adds. "We're not trying to put a
million albums out there, because we first want to make sure the band
is in front of the consumers' faces."

frogstomp, which peaked at No. 9 on The Billboard 200 only three months
after its release and has sold more than 1.7 million units in the U.S.
according to SoundScan, has undoubtedly set a high standard for Epic.

Hastings Books, Music & Video senior music buyer Skip Young says
that the Amarillo, Texas-based chain is awaiting the release "with much
anticipation."

"We're excited about it, and I think that kids are, too," says Young.
"The last album just kept selling well, and I don't think the band was
even able to tour here because of their school schedule."

Epic senior VP David Massey says that while the label is sensitive to
the fickle tastes of radio and a volatile retail environment, it is
confident that the market will respond enthusiastically to Freak Show.

"We're not daunted at all [by the success of frogstomp]," he says. "We
are quietly confident that this is the album that is going to take them
to the next level. The feedback we're getting from press and radio is
that it's like the band has skipped its second album and this is its
third."

Indeed, though Freak Show contains a fair amount of straightforward
familiar grunge elements, such as on the wailing refrain to Lie To Me,
silverchair surprises with appealing symphonic elements on the rock
ballad Cemetery.

silverchair drummer Ben Gillies says the new sounds came about after
the band members found that a few of the songs they composed on
acoustic guitar didn't translate properly in a full-on rock assalt.

"Cemetery just didn't suit drums, so we thought we would do something
to make it a little more exciting, and that turned out to be the
strings," he says. "And on Petrol & Chlorine, it just had an
Arabic/Indian feel, so we started to use some Indian instruments. I
guess it came from listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, too."

The band's songs are published by Fat Llama/Dirty Water Music.

Gillies also says that the band members, who are all 17 years old, felt
more comfortable contributing their thoughts on production this time
around.

"We spent a lot more time and were much more involved on this album,"
says Gillies. " On the last record, we were so young that we didn't
know what was going on. Now that we're older, we knew what we wanted,
and we knew some of the basics to getting to that."

To target the act's multimedia-savvy fans, Freak Show contains
enhanced-CD features, including a band bio, interview footage, and
in-studio and live performance clips.

The act will also remain active on the Internet, where O'Donnell estimates it has 30 dedicated World Wide Web sites.

Of those, Murmur selected a site run by fan Pete Walton as the official
silverchair site. In addition to linking with Sony's site, it will
begin a countdown 30 days prior to the album release date that features
band diary entries and interview segments with the album's producer,
Nick Launay.

The band members, who don't graduate from school until the end of 1997,
will break from studying to perform in the top 20 U.S. markets during a
month-long tour in February, followed by a nationwide U.S. tour from
April 13 through May 14.

"We're juggling around their schooling, and it's like trying to feed
5,000 with three loaves of bread," he says. "It made it more difficult,
but I don't think the band is going to suffer."

The album's first single, Abuse Me, will go to modern and mainstream
rock radio Jan. 13. The label serviced key markets with the album
during the first week of November.

The band will appear on syndicated rock programs Rockline and Modern
Rock Live. It is also returning to MTV, where it fared extremely well
last year with the clip for Tomorrow. Videos for Abuse Me and Freak
will both be in the can by the time of the album's release.

In Canada, the band is slated to perform and field questions on
MuchMusic's Intimate and Interactive program during release week.

Epic will bolster these major efforts with fan-club mailings and fliers at concerts and board-sport events.

The label will also advertise an 800 number that will play snippets from the album.

As for the band members' youth, those involved with the project say
that while they expect the usual gawking by the media, the music will
eventually take center stage.

"It's one thing to be washed up at 32, but who wants to be washed up at
17?" says Watson. "The band delivered a great album, and we wanted to
do justice to them by being in a position where all the pieces are in
place."